


A Light During the Year of the Plague

by DixieWilliams



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Gaming, Gen, The Sims 4, YouTube
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:54:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28434237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DixieWilliams/pseuds/DixieWilliams
Summary: Two men return two years later to a gaming channel staple, to provide a bit of comfort to a world on fire with plague, fear, and aching loneliness.  It sounds like a noble quest, but don't worry -- there's plenty of Bob Pancakes almost dying digitally to enliven the world of the young people who enjoy their content.   It's an alternative timeline of Dan and Phil returning to the Sims let's play  in order to give comfort to fans near and far.
Relationships: Dan Howell/Phil Lester
Kudos: 8





	1. Chapter 1

For most of their fans, it began on December 8, when a scheduled live show suddenly flooded inboxes of the long dormant Dan and Phil Games channel. The countdown clock whirred for December 12 at 3:00 pm GMT. The custom thumbnail glowed on screens around the world, pure white, the digital background of snow, slashed through by a black snowy rock, slightly off-center, one side pixelated in a slightly different color. In the upper corner the bright green point of the lowest point of a Sims plumbob.

For Phil Lester, it began on December 4, as he heard a grunt from the direction of Phil’s filming room. It was followed quickly by a quick scrape, and a muttered Shit! which echoed up the stairs. Phil waited for a moment. A knock and a thump later, he swung his legs off the arm of the couch, placed a small bowl on the side table, the oats sloshing against the side of the bright red bowl. Phil pattered out of the main living area, pointing ominously at Scraggy, who ruffled her feathers and shook her head back and forth. The sliding doors were shut but he was afraid. Phil had watched the two pigeons scrounge closer and closer to the windows over the past few weeks, and he was afraid they’d get in, and then he had no idea what he would do. For sure, Dan would be the one to chase the pale gray body into the kitchen.

Now he abandoned the stern gaze of Scraggy’s boy Steve, huddled like a wet glove above her on the flat part of the railing, and headed downstairs, scratching his arm. The heating was on in the apartment, and his body was warm, but his skin dried out so easily. Phil grabbed the railing end and swung around, headed to the slounge, glancing into the kitchenette as he went. When he rounded the corner, he was met unexpectedly by a white post, sliding toward him at a forty-five degree angle. 

“Aaahh,” Phil exclaimed, one hand tapping the top shelf. The shelving unit stopped moving. Phil peeked over it and cocked an eyebrow. “Why are you moving this? It took me forever to wrangle it in there.”

Dan knocked his head back and flipped the curls out of his eyes. Phil smirked when he saw those springy curls darkly wet and sticking to Daniel’s skin, flushed and sweaty, and he mentally made a note to begin their training on a regular basis in January again. They had slacked during the last few weeks, as they did every year at this time, enjoying each other’s company as they went into a small hibernation around the beginning of December. It was a time of slow memory and current joys, followed by the visits to their families. But with the world under a flaming sword of lockdown, Phil wondered how they would do it this year if they had no December time away from each other. Would they eventually become blanketed mounds on the couch, calling in deliveries, complaining about the slightly drift of cold air? Twins, side by side, each sinking into his end of the couch, occasionally moving to sleep in the big double bed, but shuffling everywhere, to the shower for quick hot showers, and back to the comfortable gullies dug into the cushions? 

Dan leaned over the side of the shelf. “Help me,” he pointed at the edge that snagged on the door frame, a bit that stuck out and had given Phil enough trouble getting the shelf in there. “Put your fingers between the edge and the jamb.”

“You’ll pinch my fingers.”

“I won’t—” Dan snapped, then grimaced slightly, and said slowly, “I will try not to pinch your fingers.”

Phil slid his hand down the top shelf, and a moment later, felt Dan lean the pressure of the twist onto his hand. He thought about making a small ruckus, whining perhaps, but when he glanced back up at Dan, he saw the deeply furrowed lines and the very conscious shifting eyes away from Phil’s gaze. _Oh, what now? Is this a new turn in this illness, a manic phase we will have to navigate?_

Together, Phil backing cautiously out, yelping when he inadvertently struck the edge of the old sofa with its well worn crease, Dan muttering _pivot! pivot!_ like a 90s sit-com character, Dan lifting it at the end to slide it past the final creaking wooden edge of the filming room door, they brought it out and set it down, shelves facing the sofa. Phil looked around. On the lower kitchenette shelves, Dan had piled his singing pickle, the brightly colored balls and wooden bowl, the lava lamp, and the other assorted rick rack, carefully lined up, the pile marching away down the countertop. Phil reached over and picked up the pickle, held it up, and opened his mouth to lip sync its strange cry.

Dan leaned on one sock clad foot and shook his head, still not meeting Phil’s look, staring at the top of the shelf and wiping imaginary dust from it. Phil finally stopped mouthing the strange shriek. He waited a moment as Dan did not lift his gaze, just scratched the back of one leg with his toe, and then turned to go back into the room.

“Hey,” Phil reached and grabbed his arm, just slightly his fingers clutching the muscle, enough to bring Dan to a halt, and Phil told him, “You have to explain this to me. What I’m thinking is probably worse than what it is.” He waited.

Dan puffed all the air out of his mouth slowly. The sound of his lungs emptying echoed in the room. “So, we still have the cables in the closet, right? And I’m going to get the extra mounts for the DSLR to lift it up, yeah?” Dan’s neck tilted slightly as he looked back into the room, rolling his face up and away from Phil, who stepped closer, nearly knocking the shelf into the bar island, trailing his fingers from bicep to forearm, feeling Dan’s goosebumps rise up beneath his fingers. “And I can set up the monitoring workstation and the laptop, it take a few days, yeah? We might—we might have to test it out, adjust some cabling, even put back up the sound tiles.”

Phil leaned in. He frowned, looked away at the bright December day outside their apartment windows, the cold wind of a London morning rattling the spiny brittle dead leaves of the plants on the patio. With this long period of quarantine in the city, their world had shrunk again away from their very generous outdoor space, and as they had pivoted back inward, the outside world had taken on the bright shiny sheen of a painting, real but at a distance. Phil looked back at him. Dan was watching him warily, those cheeks which had loosened over the years into two small folds on either side cutting river lines into this sides of his face. During this period of time, Phil offered wondered about his thin frame, the bones showing through, the worry in Phil’s heart that Dan secretly pinched the loose skin and raised it from his frame, pleased, when all Phil wanted was the heartiness of his laugh and the expanse of his mind, and he did not care for an extra stone that seemed to plague Dan so much.

Phil pushed his forehead into Dan’s shoulder. “Why?” he said softly. “I though you said you never wanted to do that again.” 

When Dan chuckled, he didn’t knock Phil off, but curled his hand up and around Phil’s shoulder and held him, curving Phil deeper into his neck, until Phil felt the ridge of his nose softly press into Dan’s neck. He could feel the breaths as Dan sighed and then breathed deeply again, and told him, “I did say that. But it’s been years Phil, and I was so tired then. You were tired too.” A slight pinch on the back of his arm. “Admit it.”

“You’re going to set up the gaming room again? Where will I film now? And what’s going on?”

“You’ll be fine,” Dan rocked him slightly, whispered into his hair, “it won’t be set up forever.” 

“How long?”

“Just one video. I think. We’ll see.”

Phil rubbed his eyes beneath his glasses and drew back, leaving the warm of that embrace. Dan was leaning back against the wall, his shirt slightly pulled down on the side where Phil are briefly rubbed his flesh, and his eyes darting around desperately. “What for, Daniel?” he asked. “You have to tell me, else I’m just going to sneak down in the middle of the night and put it all back.”

It was a hollow threat. But Dan’s eyes stopped darting and returned to him, and in those warm swirled mocha colors, Phil watched the irises dilate slightly. He quirked an eyebrow again. Dan rolled his eyes slightly, and then said, “Tell me, Phillip Lester, that they didn’t make Mt. Komorebi for us, for us specifically.”  
Phil laughed, a bubble that came from deep, unbidden. “For us,” Dan repeated, his own grin sparking quickly, “Like they reached down into us and thought, what sort of expansion appeals to Daniel Howell and Phillip Lester, specifically?! Like spe-ci-fic-ly!?” Phil grinned and crossed his arms, loosening Dan’s hold on him, so that the other man shifted back to standing, and approached him, within a handswidth of Phil’s chest, making the hairs raise on his neck and arms, even now, even after all these years. Dan’s voice dropped an octave, “Only for us, for the girls and the gays and the nonbinaries, with a hot spring and shades of Japan and blooming cherry blossom trees and hotpots on kotatsu tables?! Really Phil, they could not have aimed it more directly at the two of us if it was a laser guided missile.”

Dan took a single hand and turned it outward, dragging his knuckles down the side of Phil’s face. “Do you know what I want to do with that, Phil? Now, at the end of this hellish year? I never wanted to do it again, I had no desire, no joy except in the ending.” Dan let his nails rest on Phil’s jaw and without thinking about it, Phil turned his face to them and kissed the clean flat surfaces, tempted to suck one finger into his mouth but stopped by the smirk of the lip that passed over Dan’s face quickly.

Instead, Phil murmured, “I have some idea.”

He kissed the fingertips lightly. Phil looked back at the half-emptied filming room, thinking about how long it would take to get the set up right again, how many hours they would have to spend setting up, testing the cables. He wondered if he could convince Dan to do a live instead of pre-record. A live show meant more gaming, more years from his twenties in his memories, more time in the small square room with just them and the warm metallic humming of the machines, a cocoon that would reach out and wrap up the ones who were aching and hurting and frightened, and he had so many ideas, he missed the most important one, the one that like the heat seeking strike of the very specific expansion pack, went straight into the core of him and planted the seed there, a small unknowing bulb that Phil wouldn’t recognize until days later. 

For now, all Phil could think, was the word _healing_. 

When he blinked again and then opened his mouth and looked back to Dan, he found the other man standing there looking at his lips, looking back up to his eyes, and then to his hairline, back to the fingers he still lightly brushed with his lips, and Phil flushed. Eleven years transformed the fire from raging into a banked burning, but never extinguished it, making it flare and pop unexpectedly when the logs within shifted. 

Dan suddenly scratched his nose, looked away very deliberately, and said, “It will take time to get it set up again. Let’s not fool around.” Then he looked immediately back at Phil, and saw the pun rising with the quick intake of breath, and shook Phil a bit at the shoulders. “No, no. No. Stop that. You. Stop that.” 

Phil took a step back, out of the warm circle, and look critically at the fridge. “Do we have any water down here? We may need to stay hydrated as we work,” and tripped almost immediately over the corner of the couch, only caught by Dan’s quick hand shooting out. “Sorry, sorry” – and then he suddenly squeaked, “Dan, what if I can’t remember the password to the channel?” They kept a tight control of their account passwords, working through random number and letter generators, avoiding the security risk of family and location and years of significance. The danger of a break in somewhere always loomed large.

“Y’ alright, you spoon, you have that password saved in the password app, and I double-saved it in mine, we’re good,” Dan told him. He shook his head. “That’s who you are, Phil. You save passwords.”

“Oh, yeah,” Phil smiled brightly, and Dan fought the partial roll of his eyes again. “Then let’s get started.”


	2. Chapter 2

For the fans, it began on December 12 at 3:01 pm, GMT.

For Phil, it began hours before, when he woke and padded out to the kitchen to find Dan doing yoga poses on a mat on the floor, the couch pushed back into the kitchen. Dan fell into downward dog and then sun pose, over and over again, the sweat darkening the back of his t-shit, the white ankles poking out of his soft cuffed black pants. Phil yawned and reached into the cupboard for a glass. He poured a cup of water, drinking slowly, occasionally glancing back toward Dan, watching the light sparking in his hair and against his red shirt, Dan a dark profile against the bright shine of the window. Phil dumped in coffee and set the electric pot on. He finished his water, rubbed his eyes, and watched the coffee slowly diffuse. 

Dan made no movement toward him. The mat squeaked when he particularly stretched the long curve of his body quickly. The coffee bubbled and boiled in the pot.

Finally Phil said softly into the upper kitchen cabinets, “No Red Bull, no wine. The caffeine from the coffee is enough. You should not hype your body up, you’ll crash.” 

Dan leaned his head back against his shoulders, chest arched toward the windows. “I know,” he replied. “It’s been a long time, and I am trying to remember everything that was good for the outcome.”

Phil blew on his coffee, dumped four spoonfuls of sugar in it, and turned to lean against the counter. “Years ago, you would have argued with me. I know how to work on YouTube, Phil.” The mimicking made Dan’s feet curl up as he once again went to downward dog. Just like past Dan would have argued with Phil, young Dan would not have prepared himself with self-meditation and stretching, instead just let the anxiety coil up inside, and then made mistakes and self-recriminations as he had to refilm again and again. 

Dan set both feet. “Phil,” he puffed, looking under one armpit at Phil, hair floppily swinging in the air, “I’m not that stupid boy anymore.”

Phil grinned. “You’ll always be my stupid boy,” he said, and sauntered, actually sauntered away with the coffee warm against his palm, throwing over his shoulder, “Take a shower in time to get your hair dry.” 

It was almost drowned by Dan’s cry, “I hate you!”

“I loathe you entirely. I’ll be getting dressed!”

Four hours later, as the clock mercilessly ticked down, they were both dressed, Phil in an Oscar’s Hotel t-shirt and Dan in an Alexander McQueen silken number that made his cheeks look like bright spots of color on his face. Daniel kept smoothing his hair in the monitor. Phil reached and took a quick drink of water from the glass. Then he scooted back and clapped his hand together to see if the levels were good for their sound equipment, watching the bright green bar spike in to the red zone and back down into a low steady green. He placed a hand on his chest, felt his heart beating wildly. It had been so long. Would their easy banter come back to them in a live show, or would they stumble and mumble their way through? He glanced at Dan only to find Dan smiling down at the laptop, a small quirk on the side of his mouth nearest Phil, and before Phil could clear his throat to speak, Dan’s left hand stopped typed and reached over to his palm, sliding the fingers into his own, giving his a slight squeeze. Phil took a deep breath, stared at the ceiling for several moments, did some relaxation exercises that they had learned over two tours. His heart fluttered again as the iPhone gave a five minute warning.

The show began at 3 pm. When Dan logged into the account at 3:00 pm, they spent 30 seconds, murmuring softly to each other, Phil asking, “Are we live, are we on? There!” and pointed over his shoulder at a small red dot floating in the upper right corner of the streaming window. “I think you can see us, can you see us? Can you hear us?” He unconsciously raised his voice, peered into the dark round circle of the lens like a farmer opening the barn doors.

Then chat exploded into a trailing line of white and multicolored emojis, scrolling so fast that it began to mimic the bright lights twinking on the plant behind them. Dan snorted, and quickly typed into slow mode, losing himself completely in quieting the screen until it was just back to their basic knowledge that they were live.

Phil smiled up at the DLSR camera. “Welcome back, Dan and Phil Time Skips!”

Dan stopped typing and rubbed his eyes, leaning into his chair. “Really?” he muttered. “Really, Phil?”

“Well it’s been a while since we’ve been on this channel,” Phil answered, gesturing upward, the tilt of his hand remembering the 30-degree angle that worked best with their equipment. He grinned and looked at Dan. He’d been thinking about it since the day he’d caught Daniel moving the shelf out of the room. Right now, Dan was slumped into the chair and rubbing the bridge of his nose warily, not even looking up.

Phil shrugged. “They’ve noticed that we’ve been gone for a long time, and a lot has--”

Dan raised a hand, and knocked Phil’s wrist away from the camera. “Anyways,” he said sternly, cocking an eyebrow at Phil, smiling, the reflection of the powerful white lights twinkling in his eyes like it did in so many of Phil’s fondest memories. “Anyways… we’re here for some Sims.” Dan clapped his hands together, cupping his fingers around each other, and then threaded them together, tucking them beneath his chin. Shifting his weight, leaning on his elbows, he batted his eyes at the camera. “We’ve spent four fucking hours downloading updates to this old laptop to get back to the Howlter clan. And we’ve noticed that a particular expansion pack, lovely as it is, is the one thing that Phil and I would love to do with the Howlters. When last we left them, it was Father Winter in the home and giving each other holiday presents--” 

Over the next half hour, they delved back into the lore of the Howlters. Very soon, the holiday tree was sold -- over Phil’s objections, as he mentioned they should keep it instead of chucking everything -- but as soon as Dan took control of the mouse on the laptop, he knew there was no hope. As they looked in on the Pancakes clan as well, and skimmed over the history of Dalien’s interesting lineage, Phil would find himself leaning back and watching Dan from slightly behind, the obvious showmanship, the exaggerated gestures, the genuine laughter and awe when Nuki was admired from a low floor angle on the camera -- Dan even paused to satisfy the 37 Simstagram followers with a selfie, Phil muttering _it’s hard when your fans only see your infrequent posts_ , earning him a black look that dissolved into a pursed lip - then Dan’s quick duckface as he covered Dab and Evan’s relationship, including the trip to Selvadaroda, and the even more distant trip to Granite Falls.  
Soon it was decided to combine the Pancakes and Howlter into one mega-household, before looking at the rental lots in Mt. Komorebi revealed that, housing the couples and Dalien, not enough beds would go around. Dan and Phil split the families back up, and they rented 511 and 512 Kiyomatsu. 

As they contemplated, there were oohs and aahs over the differing neighborhoods, a quick note about “this is where we would live if we lived in Mt. Komorebi” as they studied Wakaba, and then each of them noted things -- karaoke! hot springs! -- that they wanted to do. Phil chuckled and shook his head when Dan noted that he was also fascinated by the mountain sports, the bunny slopes. Dan leaned so far back into the chair that the springs let out a disastrous squeak and he tapped Phil’s forearm with impunity, insisting that Phil didn’t know him, that he would very well like go out and snowboard. If privately, if no one else was near him.

As Dan settled Sims into individual beds, complaining about the price of a three-day rental without getting their money’s worth in a tourist town, together they began the first night as a time to explore the world. They sent “the mums,” as they began calling non-clone Eliza and Tabitha, to the Sutefani onsen to get their relaxation at the hot springs, then sent Bob and Dil to the temple for some cultural experiences -- both these men could use some culture, Dan -- while clone Eliza and Dalien hit the lounge. As it always did, the idea of filming started to take a backseat, and Phil leaned into that middle space, where his mind enjoyed the game, and his heart enjoyed seeing Daniel begin to decipher what he wanted to do within the game, and he was only vaguely aware of the camera, of the chat scrolling on the live screen.

When they had safely put everyone to bed, Dan took a sip of wine from his own glass, and then said from the corner of his mouth, looking directly at the camera, “Should we tell them, Phil?’

“Guys, while it’s wonderful that the Pancakes and the Howlters are vacationing here in Japan--” Both Dan’s hands slammed flat on the table, and he was aware of the other man’s body slumping entirely, as his head whipped toward him, “-- I mean, here in Mt. Komorebi” -- Phil air quoted the Sims world -- “that’s all for naught for what we’re about to announce. If you can guess, then you’re ahead of the game.” One quick pull of his t-shirt, Phil grinned and he drew out the news with a drum roll on the desk. Dan leaned on one arm of the char as the drum roll continued. Phil continued, “What is it, Dan? Can you guess?” and Dan passed a hand over his eyes, causing Phil to grin even more wildly before he announced, “For we are here.. really… for the destination wedding of Dab and Evan!”

Dan mock feigned surprise, and then together they looked over at the chat. “OMG,” quoted Dan, reading quickly, and nodded, “Yes, a destination wedding says Dansbigtoe -- interesting username, as an aside -- yes, in this magical place, from user TiltMerritt1998.”

Phil began to pop his hands up. Dan stopped reading the messages and looked at him sternly. Phil raised both eyebrows, all his fears about the banter not coming back to him forgotten, and said, “Yeah, yeah!” Again his fingers popped up all around him in lazy gestures.

“Phil,” Dan told him, “it was eight pounds. You’ve gotten your money’s worth.”

“But we need fireworks! It’s Dab’s wedding!”

“This is a live stream, you spork,” Dan told him. “You can’t add fireworks to the live show.”

“Oh,” answered Phil, mildly disappointed. “I sort of -- I forgot that part.” He giggled again, and took a quick sip of his wine from the glass, as Dan gestured up and down at him with one single hand while staring into the camera lens above them. 

“No, what we need is to get these lazy bums out of bed,” Dan turned back to the game and pointed, “Bob’s going to wee on himself, and I think Dalien may start to eat family members if he doesn’t get fed.” With a few swipes he began to get everyone up. Surprisingly, clone-Eliza cooked quite a good meal for the entire Pancakes household, and when Dan switched to the Howlters again, he even sent them over to eat the remaining leftovers.

In the second hour of the live stream, Phil’s consciousness faded even further from the camera in front of them. Dalien went on a walk and almost missed his opportunity to make a wish with the forest sprites, while Dil, Tabitha, Dab, and Evan went snowboarding, where Evan wiped out at Dil’s feet, leading Dan to make a comment about fathers-in-law and approval. He looked over at Phil immediately after that, and Phil’s mind swam back to the surface, presenting the camera with his most innocent face, mouthing, _I don’t know what you mean_ , as Dan expounded on the approval of one’s in-laws as a measure of longevity in a relationship.

Soon Dan sent each member of the household back to the rental lots and placed them into bubble maps, rose petal and seaweed wraps a must, to calm down the parents and the happy couple. He caught Dab and Evan canoodling in an upstairs hallway and sighing, said, “None of that before the wedding,” before sending each man into a different bedroom where he promptly locked the door. 

Phil insisted they change the women’s outfits into a great mother of the bride dresses, and they spent a bit more time adjusting the colors and the makeup. Dan complimented the Maxis team on their new color palettes for both skin tones and blusher, while they both ignored chat comments that said **Viewers Pick My Outfits 2** should be followed by **Blindfolded Makeup 2**. Dan had to set a timer on his iPhone so that Phil had only a few minutes to tweak Dalien’s actual skin color, a useful but time consuming process.

It was after 4 pm when Dan tapped lightly on the table and pronounced, “We can’t stall this any longer, Phil,” and made both Dab and Evan begin to practice self confidence in their respective mirrors as everyone got dressed for the wedding. There was one horrible moment when the groups teleported to Hanamigawa Koen, the beautiful park down the hill. Phil, ignoring the transport, began to plot where the wedding venue would go for their party when he heard Dan shrieked out and then burst into uncontrollable laughter. At first Phil thought one of the Mt. Komorebi spirits had wandered onto the board, the skies rapidly darkening as the figure moved below and Phil squinted, thinking even his glasses wouldn’t help him see what it was, and then Dan clicked on Dil’s info bobble in the corner and found that Dil had shown up at the wedding venue in his brown bear suit from Granite Falls so long ago. Phil leaned into him, clutching at his side, tears bursting from the corner of his eyes, as Dan said, “The au-audacity of this man! Dil, what is wrong with you?!” He slapped at Phil’s bicep and then turned to him. 

Phil knew that they’d been streaming for an hour, that they were more than a little tipsy as they sipped wine and played with the activities of this pseudo Asian culture, so he was surprised himself when Dan leaned a little too close and whispered, “Can you believe him?” Phil blinked, looked quickly down at his lips, and then jolted himself out of the moment to stare back into the camera. Dan cleared his throat, dragged a hand through his curly hair, and turned to the camera, a constant shadow over this moment, and Phil knew that his lips were too swollen, his cheeks too flushed, and that they were both exposed in a way that they had never been exposed before. Dan spoke up, raising his volume, “Can you believe him -- it’s Dab’s wedding day and he shows up in a bear suit! The audacity!”

Phil leaned back in his chair, felt the sweat trickle down the back of his neck. His heart was pounding. He wiped a tear away from one cheek, puffed out his cheeks slightly, and wheezed out, “Better than being in frickin’ shorts.”

“True,” Dan muttered, and sighed and when he bent over the laptop again, Phil could not resist a brief casual rub of his knuckles down Dan’s shoulder to the crook of his elbow, and before he knew it, Dan’s hand came up and squeezed, and held over his hand, and then squeezed again. 

Dan set his head in his hand, “Now, let’s change you into something more appropriate,” and soon had Dil’s outfit in the creation module switched to something more seasonally appropriate -- best add coats over everyone’s outfits, before they all freeze to death -- and then Dan pronounced, “Great classic Game of Thrones overcoat final looks. Runway approved. Now let’s go get our boys.”

By the time they had wrestled Dab and Evan into similar outfits, Evan’s suit slightly more colorful versus Dab’s more stolid choice, and returned from the rental houses to the Sims park, they found that clone Eliza was about to wee on herself and Dalien was trying to wonder off and flirt with a young woman. Phil pointed out specific actions, sending Eliza to the toilets, and setting up the actual wedding as a party with specific goals. They reminisced about the fight at the museum, the last outdoor venue, as Summer Holiday appeared in the list of potential wedding guests. Phil grinned into his propped chin as Dan muttered, _who are these people_ , as the game provided everyone that the principal characters had ever remotely interacted with, including the ghost from Granite Falls. 

When it was time, they managed a passionate kiss just before the exchange of rings, with Evan Pancakes dipping Dab Howlter into a deep bow, and Dan actually rocked back into the chair hard enough to make it squeak again. They attempted a selfie in the park during the reception, somehow managing to capture both Tabitha taking a large bit of cheeseburger in a snake-jawed bite as well as Dalien flirting with the woman working the wedding deejay booth. “Aren’t two of these people, like, amateur photographers?” Dan sighed. “They can’t take pictures worth shit.”

Suddenly, Dan screeched. “No, no, no,” and Phil pivoted his attention from the photo to something else happening in the park. 

“Oh no,” cried Phil, “Bob’s freezing to death!”

“No, no, he’s not,” said Dan sternly, “because I am sending him home, and he’s dancing with his nonclone wife, and he’s going to stand next to the heater for as long as it takes.”

Phil pulled his t-shirt up into his chin, and he said softly, “It wouldn’t be a Howlter family gathering without a catastrophe. Are you sure you can save him?”

“Yes, Phil,” Dan’s hand cut through the air emphatically. “We practically burned their marital bed just before Evan was conceived, so we are not -- we are not -- allowing Bob Pancakes to die at Evan’s wedding.” With a few clicks, he turned up the pop music so that non-clone Eliza would encourage her husband to move his long duster coat from side to side, and then Dan turned up the heat in the room. 

Now they swooped back and gathered the Howlters, asking them to join the Pancakes in the Kiyomatsu rental cabin next door. Together Phil and Dan encouraged the Sims to feast. Dan pouted over Dil’s decision to make a salad rather than eat the new food offered in the expansion, but Phil was staring at Dab and Evan, talking to their families, remembering that this second generation of a Sims family was now married. “We never changed their last names,” Phil murmured, glancing at the camera, and then met Dan’s knowing gaze.

“It doesn’t matter,” Dan answered. He looked back at the lens and then back toward Phil, smiling, leaning his head back against the tall leather of the game chair, head twisted to one side, the wrinkles around his eyes deep and furrowed. “On this very channel, we said marriage was just a piece of paper.” 

“Yes,” said Phil, and he felt what had bloomed in his chest when he had seen Dan working so hard to make the room ready for live streaming begin to twist and unfurl. “Everything’s changing. Everything’s growing. But everyone is so sad.”

Dan arched an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

Phil cleared his throat slightly, glanced nervously up at the lens, and then over at the chat, which Dan had only haphazardly monitored as they had tried to save Bob’s life. Dan picked up his wine glass, swirled the last bit of it and gulped it down, rubbing his eyes. “It’s nearly five o’clock, and we’re out of our beverage of choice, Phil, so tell me, please, what did you mean? I should say, tell us.” Dan lifted a shoulder as he crossed his arms on the table and waggled it at the camera. 

Phil swallowed and leaned back in his chair and for a moment, he felt that persona slipping away, AmazingPhil tucking quietly back, like a mask pulled down to his chin haphazardly, no protection according to what he wanted to say. The arrow of fire in his chest bloomed, so Phil simply said it, made it real in this room where so many things were colored pixels and carefully worded innuendos. “We aged the Pancakes and the Howlters, but we never said we’d let them go to to the ultimate ends, you know? In their timelines, this wedding is taking place right after Father Christmas left.”

“But here,” Phil gestured around the room, “two whole years have passed. So many things have changed.” His hand slipped down Dan’s arm again to rest in the crook in the elbow on the table, and for the first time, Dan leaned back further, his old way, tipping out of camera sight. But Phil pulled him back into the camera’s range as he spoke, “So many people having babies and getting married and moving, and yet so many people will have a strange Christmas this year. It’s quite possible that if the Sims world is like our world, then Davan may adopt a baby--”

Dan blinked and then leaned toward him, brow furrowing. “Is that-- is that their ship name?”

Phil grinned and nodded, and Dan slapped his other hand over his eyes, “Oh god.”

“Davan could adopt a Sims baby and then… it’s possible that it would be months or even a year before Dil and Tabs could get to hold that baby,” Phil said. He squeezed Dan’s arm, and Dan’s hand trailed slowly from his jaw down to his shoulder and then covered Phil’s hand, and he said, “But Sims world isn’t like our world, where this hellish year has so caused all of us to do things we’ve never done before. My dad had some period of isolation during one of his treatments. He couldn’t get a visit from either me or Martin during our birthdays that year, as they coincided with the worst of the compromised immunity.” Phil blinked and realized that his eyes were stinging, and he drew a breath, and said, “It’s like that for everyone now. Everyone. All over.”

Dan made one of those small still noises that meant he was hurting because someone he loved was hurting. After eleven years, Phil knew that noise just as he knew when the electricity was out and the utter stillness of the apartment meant no machine hummed and clicked in the dark. He looked back at the camera, and said, “That’s why when Dan said, this pack was made for us, that I wanted to come back. Because this place, these characters, these people” -- Phil raised his fingers slightly toward the camera -- “this is a part of home that we may not get this Christmas. We may not be able to travel or see each other, or hold each other, or like Martin and Cornelia, be unable to place a child into the arms of a beloved parent. Yet we still reach out, in what ways we can, when we can, with the familiarity that we have, to help ground a small amount of life.”

Phil looked over at the chat, watched it burble on the screen like a wellspring, and then back to the camera. “Where you are in this world, what sadness and grief you may be experiencing, I hope we’ve -- in these short hours -- made some laughter and joy that you have felt. You’ve come along with us on this journey for many years, and I know how much Dil and the Howlter clan have been in people’s lives, and when Dan suggested this, I thought that’s the best thing about the gaming channel. To see everyone laugh or speculate, or argue even, and I want that for you, for all of you. It’s familiar. In a different time, I may have expressed it in a different way, with different videos or different events. But here, in this timeline, I say it to you freely -- I hope we made you chuckle. If you walk with us a while, if we’re part of the nest that you’ve made for yourself, a familiar thread in all of this-- “ he didn’t know what to call it suddenly, overwhelmed by the aching inadequacy of _unprecedented_ and _new normal_ , and Phil stopped smiling and his face was so serious for a change -- “chaos,” he settled on and blinked and then looked back at Dan. Dan wasn’t smiling either, head still tilted against the back of the leather chair, his eyes staring at Phil with some measure of dread and trepidation. 

Phil shook his head. Very metaphysically, he felt that old AmazingPhil persona mask began to slip back down over his face, a carbon copy but more matte and smooth than the ragged edges of the real man behind it. He smiled again, pulled his hand from Dan’s grasp with a tug and then wiped both corners of his eyes with a thumb as he sighed deeply. “Sorry about that, just wanted to say that we’ve hoped you enjoyed the live stream…” and Phil heard the chair squeak next to him as Dan settled up onto his elbows on the table again, the dull sound of his hands rubbing slightly together, so Phil said, “We would normally plug our last video, but it’s probably pretty well known that it’s been a while since that one, and now that Davan - that’s Dil and Evan - are married, we don’t know when we’ll pick back up with the Sims 4. Dan?” Phil suddenly heard the rehearsed tone to his voice.

Luckily Dan had slipped as easily back into their on-air personalities. Without missing a beat, Dan said, “Preorder my book You Will Get Through This Night at shop.danielhowell.com.” Phil fought the smirk and then looked at him disbelievingly. Dan shrugged, “What? I have something to spon. We may not be making videos as much, but I can spon my book.”

Phil rolled his eyes and said, “Yeah, alright. Stick around on our channels, Dan’s very irregular channel” -- a quick snort from his right as Phil laid both hands atop each other toward his right -- “or my channel, where I may have more content this December, stay tuned!, and for our combined merch shops for the festive season.”

“Another thrilling Howlter family adventure in this notJapan world,” Dan said, his smooth voice wrapping up the entire event, “thanks to all of our chat this afternoon, and for you in joining us. Just be glad no one froze to death today-”

“No one froze,” Phil repeated.

“And Davan, the new supercouple of the Sims 4 gaming universe, married in a garden in the snow--”

“Beautiful snowy wedding,” Phil repeated. “Now we’re going to see if we can perhaps have more Sims 4 episodes, perhaps a cat in the future for Evan and Dab --”

“What?!” Dan stuttered, and looked at him from the corner of his eye.

“They can have a cat, they should have a cat,” insisted Phil. “Especially since neither of them are allergic. Can Sims be allergic to cats?” He had some dim memory of the allergy sneeze animation.

Dan scoffed. “Phil asking the real questions.”

“It’s a real question!” Phil stuttered. “It’s a real question!! I would think they could even adopt Pancake Pancakes, or --” as Dan immediately shook his head and closed his eyes -- “or even find a male cat for Pancake to whoo-hoo with, provided he’s not an asexual cat, provided he wants to whoo-hoo--”

That look of horror was one of Dan’s hallmarks, both in life and in joint content. He grasped Phil’s hands and brought them down to the table, pinning them. “Stop! No! We’re not spreading rumors about Pancake Pancakes, we’re not hate criming the digital cat, Phil. Thanks for joining us! Have a wonderful happy holiday season, if you celebrate something, or if you don’t, enjoy your time and remember, AmazingPhil” -- Dan emphasized his name, and Phil made a look of such disgust as he realized that Dan was distracting everyone again -- “himself said that we’re a family channel, a downright wholesome experience, so good job everyone. Good job! Bye!”

“Bye!” Phil cried as Dan raised his hands and placed them against the camera, his pale palms blocking the entire camera range. Phil suddenly found himself on the opposite side from clicking to end the livestream. “I’ve got to-- I will have to --” With his left hand he slid his hand against the wireless keyboard to bring it closer, his foream sliding against Dan’s chest. Suddenly Dan began to wriggle. Phil giggled as he slapped at the mouse, tried to click as he peer over Dan’s shoulder, rolled tight as he cupped the camera lens. Dan squealed. The sound was still active even if he covered the lens. Dan glanced at him over the other shoulder and mouthed, _hurry up_ , to which Phil mouthed _I’m trying!_

Finally, he clicked, minimized the browser entirely and Dan mock-whispered, “we’re still live Phil.” When Phil opened the browser again, the chat was buzzing with comments about two men who couldn’t even close a live stream. He deliberately leaned his chin on Dan’s shoulder, and blew a raspberry as he clicked to end the stream. The sound was loud in the room. Phil knew that the mic picked it up. As the stream confirmed its end, Dan relaxed, staring at the screen. He took his fingers down, flexing them strongly, and then turned to Phil. “Really? Really? Was that necessary?”

“Gives them something else familiar -- speculation.”

For the fans it ended at 5:14 pm, GMT, on December 12.


	3. Chapter 3

For Phil, it ended an hour later. After gaming, after the rush of ending the video, they cleaned the room as they always did, the wine glasses clicking in Dan’s hands as he silently pursed his lips and waived away Phil’s hands, Phil instead pulling the chairs back and then turning off the large rectangular lights. Often they wouldn’t speak to each other after for a while, taking the time to go to the loo, and to turn off the room’s electronics but also to turn off that persona that had emerged from each of them, that person they were in front of others, even through a camera. Phil had always known that they were able to project out of themselves in different projects, that they shared they were introverts, but that was a costume of its own, a funny strange anecdote perfectly rounded by the river, but that the reality of their own introversion wouldn’t be truly expressed until they were only with their most intimates, alone in a room. 

He did not dress when he was at home.

An hour later, Phil was sitting on sofa, feet propped up on the plush, covered in a blanket. He hadn’t taken his glasses off, yet they were slid down. The cold London wind whipped the bare branches back and forth, and out on the balcony, he watched the small bundles of Scraggy and Steve huddled together against the railing. There might be drops of rain on the window, or it was a reflection of the cloudy overcast. Phil frowned at the window, concentrating.

“Here,” said Dan, and he took a warm mug of cocoa only after he struggled with getting his hands out, and Dan paused, halfway sat down, suddenly smiling at him, holding it while Phil suddenly let out a faint squeal as he tried to clutch the mug. Dan moved it slightly, and Phil gave him a smirking look, and Dan sighed, and said, “Fine. No hard mode.” His voice was slightly rough after speaking so long in the video.

Phil sipped his cocoa and murmured his approval as Dan settled on the other side of the cushions, piling throw pillows between them, adjusting his own new blanket. Together they settled. Phil said, “Thank you for the cocoa,” and Dan nodded, and then they watched the wind move the tree branches for a few minutes. It was warm in his belly. The silence of the apartment was only broken by the faint ticking of the wall clock from the kitchen. Phil breathed deep, the faint minty crispness of the drink wafting up, and then he snuggled farther down into the blankets. They had so many things they could be doing, promoting the upcoming projects, coordinating the secret plans, talking with the merch team about the early 2021 rollouts. He wondered what moments the fans would choose to gif or endlessly replay, knew the fingers curled into the crook of Dan’s arm, the raspberry were definites, but suspected that moments when Dan had studied him for too long, with wistful eyes, during his rants on the meaning of the stream, would be picked over endlessly.

He looked over at Dan, the faint outline of wild upswept hair, the sleepy eyes. He hoped that the gaming video live show had done its work, that it had helped those who were alone during this year with the world in plague and so many things so distant, a familiar light in the distance. Dan caught him watching and instead of asking him, he turned his head and said sternly, “Staring at me is only traumatizing me, Phil. What?”

Joy, just a moment. This Christmas they wouldn’t be able to go home to their mums. This Christmas and winter, so many loved ones would be separated. Phil was exceedingly happy that he had this man, sipping a warm drink next to him, who had laughed with him during gaming two hours prior, who had stayed with him over the summer as the roller coaster crested and dove back down again, in all their public roles and secret moods, that those gifs were just a fraction of what he saw and knew to be true. Not many people had the experience of seeing someone else’s love lit in creations that others made for them, a public showing of a private thought. Phil knew that joy. Phil knew this joy, too.

“Thanks for suggesting this video,” Phil told him. “It helped me. I hope it helped you. I hope it helped them.”

Dan smiled at him, and the darkness only showed his cheek and part of his chin, and Phil snuggled farther down into the sofa, the blankets warm and soft, and then Phil put the mug down and leaned back. Sleep may be soon. He said to Dan, “This winter, we might just become part of the sofa.”

“So what?” Dan told him, and the sound of his voice was the sweetest thing he’d heard in a while, the sadness around the edges held at bay, no moment of panicked crisis and the rush of life, in this time when nothing was certain. 

Outside, a gust of wind knocked over the bird feeder. “Goddammit,” Dan muttered and swung a leg off the poof, but Phil stopped him with a hand on his arm.

“Leave it,” he said. “We can pick it up later.” Dan looked back and forth from him to the balcony, shrugged, and then settled back down. He yawned. His jaw cracked audibly.

Phil threw the blankets back over him, and shifted his own back lower on the sofa. His head was bent against his chest, Dan was a big lump next to him, the darkness of the apartment casting a cloudy glow from the reflecting street lights outside and the bank of clouds hovering over their London street. Nothing needed to be done now. Everything was waiting for them to do. It was the cold of a mid December winter’s night, in the year the world burned in fever, with the familiar threads sliding through everything, and the field lay fallow, waiting for the spring.

**Author's Note:**

> Why did I write this? I started it in November but as Phil published content, and my own life spiraled a bit out of control, I never published it until now. I started it in November because I've seen how this worldwide change has affected fans I never knew -- some of them unable to post because they couldn't afford the internet, one of them who had to move from one country to another in the middle of a pandemic, and several people very depressed as the world seemed to stop making sense for a whole year. I was so angry.
> 
> I didn't expect Phil to publish as much jolting content as he has in December 2020. The Phil and Phriends is a delight. (Also, ya boy Danny proved that he is actually the final boss to get to Phil, a true power move.) They revealed so many new details about what's happening to them that this story now seems from an alternative timeline. I referenced that idea briefly. This is the video that, if they had made different content decisions, would have been a lovely way to bring content to fans that truly comforted people.
> 
> I am somebody's mother. Hell, I may be old enough and you may be young enough, that I could be your mother. These men, this content -- it is one of the ways to stay digitally connected. It frightens me to look on this little person that I created and say phrases like "in the middle of the pandemic." She deserves more. We all do. It's not fair. And it sucks.
> 
> Here's a quote from the old school, from an author struggling to understand World War I and the 1918 flu in the same way we want to understand today:  
> “I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo. “So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
> 
> And a more recent quote, for you pop culture babies, written around the culture of Thatcher's Britain, and of an equally unsure footing:  
> I shall die here. Every inch of me shall perish. Every inch, but one. An Inch, it is small and it is fragile, but it is the only thing in the world worth having. We must never lose it or give it away. We must never let them take it from us. I hope that whoever you are, you escape this place. I hope that the world turns and that things get better. But what I hope most of all is that you understand what I mean when I tell you that even though I do not know you, and even though I may never meet you, laugh with you, cry with you, or kiss you. I love you. With all my heart, I love you. -Valerie
> 
> Why did I write this? You may be hard on yourself. You may be sad. You may be anxious and not understand why. So this is your sign. This is your fucking sign. Give permission to yourself to lay fallow for a bit. If you read a story and enjoy it on the internet, or watch a video and enjoy it on the internet, do it. Don't beat yourself up about it. I hope you find peace and a moment of joy in this hellish year of the plague. I love you. I hope this world gets better.


End file.
